The Russian steelmaker Novolipetsk Steel (NLMK) has announced that it has resumed upgrading works at its continuous reheating furnace No. 3 used for bringing billets to forging temperature before hot rolling. The project at its main production site in Lipetsk was launched in 2007 but had to be suspended due to the impact of the global economic crisis.
Accordingly, NLMK's new furnace, with a capacity of 320 mt of slab per hour, will replace the old furnace, and will ensure highly uniform slab heating and very accurate strip parameters on further rolling. State-of-the-art resource-efficiency and ecologically-friendly technologies will allow NLMK to cut energy consumption by 50 percent and reduce NO and CO emissions by 27 percent.
The project, the total value of which exceeds Ruble 2 billion (about $68 million), is being implemented in collaboration with Belgium-based CMI as part of the second stage of NLMK's technical upgrade program.
The new furnace, the foundation works for which have already been completed, will be commissioned in 2011, and will allow NLMK to increase its hot rolling capacities by 200,000 mt per year of a wide variety of steel grades.
The continuous reheating furnace No. 3 will be the third unit of its kind to be upgraded at NLMK's main production site in Lipetsk (furnace No. 5 was commissioned in 2004 and furnace No. 4 was commissioned in 2007). NLMK's key hot rolled sheet and coil consumers include such industries as construction, shipbuilding, automotive and pipe production, as well as NLMK's own cold rolling facilities, including its transformer steel plant in Yekaterinburg, Russia.